Scarlet Meidiland and Sevilliana have bloomed and grown more than any other roses I have. They came from the bare root sale they had in 2006, along with Linda Thompson and several others. They got moved out of the rose garden because they got too big, and the colors clashed with all my pastel Austins. They deserve a bed of their own, anyway. The HD roses are already blooming, and while it seems like too many when I'm planting, once they bloom I always regret not buying more! Of course, this year we've had incredible rains and cooler temps, so even the body bag roses have flourished. I think the Wayside Buy 1 get 2 free sale was the clearance sale. I bought several, and one got cancelled for some reason, but the rest have not been shipped yet! They were supposed to go out today, but who knows... They are J&P stock instead of wayside. My very best performers are the ones I bought bare root. The potted bushes from local nurseries start out as bare roots from Weeks or J&P and are grown out in cool greenhouses, and they take forever to adjust to the garden. The bare roots either make it or don't fairly quickly. When Wayside/Parks posts clearance roses, I buy types I wouldn't normally look at like minis and ogr's and rugosas, and I've been really happy with all I've tried. I'm also more likely to buy in multiples on the sales. I'm beginning to understand the design principle of planting in groups. My group of Julia Child is awesome, and so is my row of Fourth of July, and today I saw the first buds on my hedge of Carefree Wonder. I'm hoping it looks like Pappu's someday. All were clearance roses! Anyway, if there is a late sale this year, I sure hope someone posts it! I'm still looking for Disneyland Rose, Laura Bush, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Sweeet Promise, Catalina, Bishop's Castle, Chihuly, Happy Chappy. That's my fantasy, finding all those for 2.69 each with free shipping, haha. cindi

IâÂÂm trying to ID this plant. Though I have not been to the swap in the last two years, due to conflicts on that date, IâÂÂm wondering if past participants can ID something for me. Therefore if someone brought this plant, if would have been from 2011. It may just be a weed. ItâÂÂs very tall now, because I remembered planting something from the swap in that area, so I let it go though I did not recognize it. Maybe 5 feet, and still getting taller. Growing tips are always bent over. Getting a lot of sidegrowth and branching now. The white fluffy things are just the flowers of the persicaria plant showing behind it. Thanks for your help!

Just like someone mentioned before: do everything backwards from what you've learned... not really, but honestly if you've amassed gardening know-how up north, you might as well chuck most of that knowledge in the "doesn't apply here" bin and listen to the folks on this forum. Gardening in AZ is extremely different from gardening up north. one thing to always remember: If the label on a plant at Home Depot or Walmart says "Full Sun", in most cases that translates to "morning sun, afternoon shade". There are not a whole lot of plants that can thrive in our full sun although there are some good ones. The winters here still do get cold enough at times that we can't grow tropicals without protection. Yeah we don't get too many freezes, but we do get them from time to time, so things like avocados, bananas, mango, are a challenge here. There are a few things you can grow in the summer, but your main gardening seasons will be spring and fall. I'm mostly an edibles gardener so my post will reflect that. In the summer I've had good luck with Armenian cucumbers, Okra, Cantaloupe and Watermelons (they use a lot of water, but they love the heat). Corn is supposed to also do ok in the summer, but I haven't tried that yet. In the fall you can do a lot of things. Since the growing season is fairly short so you need to go with short season varieties. Winter is one of my favorites for gardening here. That's when I do greens. Carrots, Parsley, herbs, Lettuce, Brocolli (It does extremely well here over the winter), peas, spinach...basically all your salad greens. So from about late Oct until around March, you can be swimming in greenery. I was supplying my whole extended family's salad needs most of last winter. The soil here in most places is about the worst soil you could imagine. Mine is hard clay, with caliche that is about as hard as concrete when dry. Some areas have a lot of crushed granite. There are areas with good soil as this used to be an agricultural area. The first thing I would do if I got a plot of land here to garden is I would dig out the soil in some of the areas where I plan on having a garden and get several BIG loads of horse manure and dump it in that area, then let it compost into place. Stuff breaks down fast here IF you keep it moist. BTW, you can get as much horse manure as you want around here for free, there are several places that have horses and they'll load your truck or trailer. In a few years you can develop some decent soil around your property and that will help a lot. I wouldn't bother with bagged "compost" or garden soil and crap like that. I think the quality of that stuff here is terrible and it's not worth the money. The soil here is very alkaline, which means that putting lime or ash on it makes it worse. You want to acidify it if possible by using sulfur. A little vinegar in the water can help temporarily. Also gypsum helps break down the clay. Plants need a good amount of nitrogen here because the heat breaks it down very fast so fruit trees will need to be fertilized at least quarterly. Some of the mineral deficiencies common here are iron and zinc defficiency. If you acidify your soil a little, it helps quite a bit. For iron, I don't like ironite, but chelated iron seems to work much better. Some fruit trees that do well here would be most of your citruses, dates, figs (very nice for ornamental and shade purposses as well), pommegranates are a piece of cake here. Peaches and nectarines will do ok too. A few varieties of grapes (especially Thompson seedless) do extremely well here if they get some afternoon shade. One of your biggest challenges will be birds, insects and diseases. Ants (particularly fire ants) will make you really really hate Arizona at times. I hate the nasty SOBs. Pest problems develop very FAST here, and you need to address them early. Some things have easy organic solutions, like for grape leaf skeletonizers you can spray them with BT which is safe (not poisonous) and they'll be gone. Other problems like white flies can be really hard to get rid of without pesticides and they can get inflict some serious damage if they get out of control. In my opinion, here you get several years's worth of plant growth in one year (I'd say in some cases about 3 yrs worth) and that translates into a LOT of work. pruning, digging up weeds...etc. A good thing to know here is that in AZ they encourage people to recycle their graywater by using it on ornamentals. I changed the plumbing in part of my house to allow my bathwater to go to my shade trees. Water is not cheap here, and if you're going to garden, it's going to be a precious commodity. For shade trees there are a lot of choices but I've fallen in love with Sissoo. Fast growing, not messy, can handle some drought, looks beautiful.

Sorry, this is long. I just changed orthopedists. The one who just did my surgery in March will not be treating me anymore, all because of his office staff. This man is an EXCELLENT doctor. I love him, and will miss him, but those girls are so totally incompetent, it's not funny. One girl, Maddie, is just unreal! She told me three times that she had changed my phone number in the system, and three times, she didn't. I've called for a prescription refill and days go by and I call again, and they say they sent it, and the pharmacy is saying they didn't. That's happened at least twice, and once, they refilled one prescription, and not the other, so I had to call them back. I was furious! The one they didn't refill was my pain medicine, and I told them I was O.D.ing on Aleve because they wouldn't call it in. I finally got it...two days later. I called once because I was in severe pain, and needed to get an excuse for a few days off work. I called back the next day. Maddie said that all she could do was "put the request back there and wait", which is bull, because I've worked for a doctor, and they count on their staff to make them aware of things like this. A week later, I was called by another girl in the office, asking about my request. I told her it was too late now, that I had gone to work all week in severe pain, because Maddie had never called me back. She said they didn't have my number, that they had to call my Worker's Comp rep to get it because the store wouldn't give it to them. Both my rep and the store say they never called them. Then there was the week before my surgery, when I filled out all the papers to take with me and spilled coffee on them. I called and got Maddie, of course, and asked her to send me another packet. No problem, she said. I didn't get it. Two days before the surgery, I called, and Nicole asked her if she had mailed it, and she said yes. I have never gotten it to this day. The day before my surgery, Nicole had to fax over a copy of it to the surgery center, and I had to fill it out there. Then there was the time that the nurse called to set up my surgery and Maddie never faxed her what she needed. She called back, and Maddie said that she was faxing it then. It never came through. She called back, and Maddie once more said "I'm faxing it now", and the nurse told her that she was sitting right next to the fax, and that something was wrong if she was faxing it right then. FINALLY, she got it faxed to her. They have an annoying habit of saying that "we tried to call you three times" or "for three days". It's always three. No more, no less. I keep asking them why it is that everyone else that calls gets through, and there are no messages on my machine if they actually called. They don't know. I finally had to call the office manager about these things, and after that, every time I would go in, they would all give each other sly little looks and snicker. I've never been treated so badly in my life! So the other day, I had a man show up at my door to pick up the ice machine they gave me after surgery. He said that they said they tried to call me for three days. I laughed out loud! I asked if it was Maddie, and he said yes it was. I called the office, furious, and talked to Nicole, who said that Maddie had on the computer that she had tried to call me three times, and if she had it on there, she did it. I just hung up, called my WC rep and had her change my doctor. She said that they had had so much trouble with this office that they were thinking about not using this doctor anymore. She said that they were the hardest ones to get reports from. PLUS, they told her I didn't need physical therapy, but they had a trainer looking at me when I went in, charging them mega bucks for ten minutes. So I'm seeing my new doctor on the 30th, and hopefully, he has a competent staff. I hate to change doctors right after surgery, but I was so stressed out by his staff, that I couldn't take it anymore.